The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Turkey violated the rights of 117 individuals who were held in pretrial detention in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016 on charges of membership in the faith-based Gülen movement, Turkish Minute reported.
In a unanimous judgment, the court found that Turkish authorities lacked sufficient evidence to justify their detentions, violating Article 5 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects against arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
The applicants in the case of Tüzemen and Others v. Turkey were among thousands detained following the failed coup, which Ankara blamed on the faith-based movement inspired by the late Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen.
The European court said Turkish courts had failed to demonstrate a “reasonable suspicion” that the individuals had committed a criminal offense at the time of their detention.
The judges noted that Turkish courts based detention decisions on a range of activities such as use of the ByLock messaging app, having accounts at Bank Asya, social media activity, possession of one-dollar bills and employment at institutions affiliated with the Gülen movement.
The court said these factors, in the absence of concrete evidence of criminal intent, were insufficient to justify detention under the convention.
It found that even when witness statements were mentioned, they lacked specific or individualized allegations that could support a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct.
The ruling builds on earlier judgments in similar cases, including Akgün, Baş and Taner Kılıç, where the court held that circumstantial indicators such as using a messaging app or subscribing to publications do not, by themselves, establish criminal liability.
The European court said that Turkish judges often relied on template justifications, citing broad legal provisions without providing a factual basis tailored to each individual case.
The judgment also criticized Turkey’s Constitutional Court for rejecting individual appeals in summary fashion, failing to provide meaningful judicial review of the legality of the detentions.
While acknowledging the broader context of the 2016 coup attempt and the state of emergency declared after it, the court said Turkey failed to prove that the detentions were strictly required by the exigencies of the situation.
As part of the ruling, the court awarded €5,000 to each of the applicants, except for six who had not submitted timely compensation claims.
The case adds to a growing body of ECtHR rulings that call into question the legal foundations of mass detentions and prosecutions carried out in Turkey since the coup attempt.
Tens of thousands of people, including civil servants, teachers, judges, journalists and businesspeople, were detained or dismissed in the post-coup purge for alleged ties to the Gülen movement.
The Turkish government designates the group as a terrorist organization, though it was a legally operating religious and social network in Turkey prior to its designation as such in May 2016, two months before the failed coup, and maintains it had no role in the putsch or involvement in any terrorist activity.
Ahead of the failed coup’s eighth anniversary last July, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said that more than 705,000 people had been investigated since 2016 over alleged Gülen ties. As of July 2023, at least 13,251 individuals were reported to be either in pretrial detention or serving prison sentences for “terrorism” linked to the movement.
These figures are thought to have increased over the past 10 months since the operations targeting Gülen followers continue unabated. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and several government ministers said there would be no “slackening” in the fight against the movement following the cleric’s death at the age of 83.
Rights groups and international observers have repeatedly criticized the breadth of the crackdown, which has resulted in the dismissal of some 130,000 civil servants.
